Learning about emotions is just like learning to read, ride a bike, or walk. It takes time, practice, and years to develop skills in managing emotions.
The check in vertical wall is an interactive way to bring conversations about emotions into your everyday family life.
You could get a peg for every family member, perhaps add your faces, a drawing, a sticker, or personalise them so you know whose peg is who.
The family can have regular check-ins, perhaps in the morning, and in the later afternoon to see how everyone is tracking for the day.
What do we learn from this? We help our children be able to learn to name their feelings, and talk about them in a healthy and supportive environment. There are no bad feelings, we all experience a range of feelings everyday. By moving our peg up and down the check in wall, we also show our children that we too, as adults also have big feelings. We don’t just have to leave it there at identifying the feeling, we can ask them where they feel it in their body, how do they know that’s what they were feeling, did anyone else at school have that feeling.
We don’t need to move straight to problem solving and fixing the feeling.
Let's just sit with it and be with the child and provide acknowledgement that you can see they are feeling ‘...’ and what you’ve noticed. For some moments a child may not be able to name their feeling, with your assistance you can tell them what you think happened and what you're noticing and wonder out loud if ‘...’ or ‘...’ may be what they are feeling because of ‘...’
Perhaps it's the happy or excited feeling, yay! Let’s talk about those feelings too.
Check in’s can be daily family rituals that support the whole families mental health, well being, family connection and development.